of
misdoing. He and his vassal desperadoes, it was averred, broke windows
and street light globes, preyed upon the apple barrels of the corner
grocery, and used language that scalded and sullied the virginal ears of
passing wash-ladies and plumber-gentlemen.

"There can't nobody live in peace in them two blocks, Judge, your
Honour," came the heated asseveration of the man in the witness chair.
"He's got more influence over my boys than what I've got myself--and the
Reform School's the only place for the likes of him."

"Where do you spend your Saturday nights?" inquired the personage on the
bench irrelevantly, and the furtive eyes of the witness shifted and lost
their self-assurance.

"Here and there, Judge, your Honour. Sometimes I drop in at Mike's place
for a glass of common beer."

"Do you occasionally send your boys--the followers of this dangerous
bandit--to Mike's place with a bucket?"

The man hesitated, and his glance savoured of repressed truculence.
"Maybe I do, once in a while," he replied doggedly. "I ain't on trial
here, am I?"

"No--not just now." The judge spoke almost gently. "Stand down and let
the fellow who _is_ on trial take that chair."

The child with the sullen face slouched forward, and the Judge's eyes
engaged his smouldering young pupil's with less austerity perhaps than
the description of his turpitude warranted. This man, who sat one day a
week to try the cases of delinquent and incorrigible children, presided
five days over more mature hearings. From Monday through Thursday he
mantled himself in judicial dignity and his language was the decorous
speech of the bench. One who observed him only on Friday would hardly
have gathered that. Just now he leaned forward and addressed the boy in
a conversational tone and an argot that savoured of the
alley-playground.

"Willie, haven't you got any other name--I mean amongst those kids that
belong to your gang?"

Willie swallowed hard, but inasmuch as he failed to reply, his
inquisitor went on:

"Surely those other kids don't call a rough-neck like you just Willie.
You wouldn't stand for that, would you? Haven't you got some
professional name like Bulldog Bill--or something?"

A fugitive glint of pride flashed in the boy's eyes under their
cultivated toughness and their present alarm, and with a sheepish grin
he enlightened this embodiment of the law.

"The other kids calls me 'Apache Bill.'"

The Judge did not smile, but accepted th